


Mortality

by Persona Non Grata (Alquimia)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Death from Old Age, Established Relationship, M/M, Older Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 14:42:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11853714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alquimia/pseuds/Persona%20Non%20Grata
Summary: It takes a special kind of strength to die, and a special kind to accept it.





	Mortality

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Mortality.  
>  **Words** : 1,467  
>  **Pairing** : Superbat (BatmanxSuperman  
>  **Warnings** : Character death, Old!Bruce, Old!Clark.
> 
> Special thanks to my beta-reader and editor for improving the grammar on this piece. 
> 
> If you have any constructive criticism regarding structure, grammar, description, narrative and english in general feel welcome to leave a comment, english is my second language, I want to improve my writing skills.

It takes him years to finally accept it was over for him, but takes him even longer to accept that Clark could still go on.  
   
Clark, at first, at the very beginning, thinks it is envy. Honestly, everyone else thinks the same. However —and here’s the interesting part— it lasts for less than a second. Bruce doesn’t know envy, he doesn’t feel it at all, not towards Clark. At least not regarding the infinite possibilities at his disposal due his powers. Maybe, just maybe, the only thing he envies and desires from Clark more than anything is the quiet life with the Kents, but never his power. Clark knows better, knows him better.  
   
It’s not the fact that he can’t fight anymore, it’s the idea that he still feels he has more to give, but his own body has made him a prisoner. It’s not his will but his body that prevents him from still protecting Gotham.  
   
It was bound to happen at some point, eventually. In a sense, Bruce always knew, he just has been more elusive about it. Clark, in the other hand, knows it, but doesn’t really get it.

  
He is old. Clark is too, but not like him. He can’t feel the frustration, the anger or the melancholy going through his body in the same dangerous and slimy way as poison would. He wants all that but couldn’t get it, couldn’t even understand it.  This is Bruce’s battle, after all. Clark never fought Bruce’s battles. Not once, not ever.  
   
The worst part is: he feels it every day.  
   
In the morning, when Bruce wakes up earlier than him and pretends he doesn’t know Clark is awake and aware, while Clark pretends he is still sleeping and not listening to Bruce breathing heavily from the effort to pull his body from its lying position. He can almost perceive how hard is for Bruce to support all those years on his back, how hard is for him to contain all those ghosts in his heart. Clark can feel it.  Yet Bruce keeps waking up and Clark keeps pretending he doesn’t know, but they both know.  
   
When it’s almost time, it gets harder, just as any kind of effort gets harder right before the end. Before crossing the final threshold.  
   
“You don’t have to do this alone.”  
   
“I don’t want you to suffer, Kal.”  
   
He smiles, and takes his hand.  
   
“You cannot prevent that. That’s not your decision or mine to make,for all that matters. It’s gonna happen anyway. I’m gonna feel it and I’m not ready, teach me.”  
   
He stares back at him. He is not smiling nor scowling, his lips are forming a thin line, but his eyes, oh god, his eyes are the warmest he has seen them in these last few months (ever since they knew), and just for a second, everything is gone from his expression, from his posture. For a moment, every point in Bruce’s life seems to reach the perfect balance.  
   
It only lasts a moment though. Then everything goes back into place, Bruce’s expression replaced by a calm yet troubled one.  
   
“I will.”  
   
Clark smiles and kisses him on the cheek.  
   
   
With time, Clark discovers is not just a series of steps. It’s more about a way of living, a way of knowing how to cheat life and how good can you get at that. Bruce is an expert on the matter.  
   
First of all, it is all about being aware about was going to happen. Bruce had already mastered that. You can see it in the way he walks through the manor, contemplating every painting, every room and object sparking a small memory in his mind. In the way he speaks to the boys (always his boys), and how his tone changes when talking affectionately about when they are going to see each other, about future plans that all of them know might or might not happen.  
   
Because obviously they know too. They are his boys, after all.  
   
When the video call is over and Bruce turns to Clark while standing up, he immediately offers his hands and his whole body for support. Bruce accepts it without any complaint, without any remark. He simply follows the motion almost as if it was an everyday thing and not the first time they do this (as it actually is).  
   
Clark can feel his throat closing and he gulps, just to prevent himself from ending in tears.

  
“You said you wanted to know.” Bruce warns, very much aware of Clark’s recent struggle.  
   
“Oh and I still want,” he says, while trying to hide the trembling in his voice. “Just give me some time to accept it.”  
   
Bruce smiles, and it’s an honest smile, not that iconic “Bruce Wayne” smirk.  
   
“That’s the thing about reality, Clark,” he looks at him, attempting to walk without being a complete death-weight and relying only on his life-long partner, “you have to live it before you can accept it. At least we have to.” He looks at him, “I have to.”  
   
Clark doesn’t answer, just takes hand between his as he helps Bruce get to their shared bedroom.  
   
   
At some point Bruce starts talking about meeting anyone who’s not there and long gone.  
   
“Alfred would be surprised when he knows how long I lasted.”  
   
“He will indeed.” Clark replies, just barely after the sentence was over, managing to control and hide any hint of surprise in his tone.  
   
“And then my parents…”  
   
Clark raises his head and looks away from the vegetables he was cutting, looking at Bruce instead, who is staring at the big window in the Kitchen, aware of who Bruce is really looking at.  
   
“Do you plan on telling them anything?”  
   
“Probably that I’m sorry about all the decisions I made. For becoming who I became.”  
Clark keeps cutting, but his eyes are still on Bruce.  
   
“Don’t you do that everyday?” Maybe in another time, saying those words would have made Bruce frown at him. But Clark knows in this moment that he can say it and Bruce’s reaction will be different.  
   
It is. He smiles, almost as if a laugh had been caught between his lips before it could be heard.  
   
“Yes, but now they’ll see I’m lying.”  
   
Clark smiles for the first time in a while. Bruce does it for the first time ever since this whole matter began haunting his mind.  
   
   
When it finally happens, it hurts much more than he had expected, probably more that any of them thought it would.  
   
   
Their last conversation is one day prior, without Clark knowing it was the last. Probably Bruce knew it (he always does). Maybe that’s why he had been so eager to go down to the cave that night, to turn on old computers and see if the old security system of cameras he installed in Gotham where still working (they weren’t). Maybe that’s why he asked for Clark’s strength to get him down, and he let himself go around the cave remembering everything said and done as Batman. Clark is by his side all the time, but Bruce acts as if was just him and his memories. Or so Clark thinks.  
   
“It was a long life, longer than it should have been.”  
 

“Don’t say that, Bruce.” Clark says a little bit concerned. (Maybe he did know already.)  
   
“It’s true, Kal.”  
   
“Bruce.”  
   
“Dying was out of question. A possibility, yes, that’s why I always had a plan, but having it actually happening? Not while I could prevent it. It seems that I can’t anymore.”  
   
“Is this a lesson?” he asks, worried about how open, how light and how sincere he looks. Feeling how he is losing the love of his life with every word he says inside of this cave.  
   
“We mortals need to die Kal, it’s supposed to happen one way or another. I’ve put myself in every situation that could kill any man and come out of them alive.”  
   
“Because you’re Batman.”  
   
“But not anymore. Not anymore,” Bruce turns to Clark, “and I’m not Superman either.” Bruce looks at the cave again, at every inch of it, his smile never fading. “It takes a special kind of strength to die, and I trained all my life to achieve it.” He turns back to Clark, putting his hand on the other’s cheek. “But you don’t have that, you might never have it”  
   
“I know,” Clark says, caressing the hand in his face.  
   
“That’s why you want to accept it. That you can achieve. If you’re going to be hurt, at least be strong enough to stand the pain.”  
   
Bruce pulls him in, for a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek he was just holding a few minutes ago.  
   
“Let’s go upstairs, we are done here.”


End file.
